AL5D and Flowarm

I’ve just built my first AL5D arm and have Flowarm installed on my computer. I’m teaching a PLTW class. I have one group of students that have finished their build as well and many more that should be finishing today or the next class.

When I connect to the robot with Flowarm it shows that it’s “found” as the light comes on and when I try to move it via flowarm it sometimes works correctly. Other times it simply twitches, many times not even the servo that should be getting signal is getting it. Sometimes it just moves wildly in very unpredictable manners. This happens when it’s simply left on and connected. I can walk up and it will twitch, a minute later it may work, a minute later it may move wildly on it’s own. My one group of students that have finished their build are experiencing the exact same issue.

During the build there was a step where we downloaded a driver and we ran a SSC-32 Servo Sequencer Utility. When I did this during the build to check the rotation servo in port 0 it simply twitched at best.

Now that it’s completely built I can run that program again and when I move each servo individually it barely twitches… most of the time that is. Occasionally I can leave it on and all hooked up and plugged in and I can walk over to the computer and it works perfectly. I can sometimes control every servo individually just as you’d expect. Again, my student group are experiencing the exact same situation.

BTW, they are on a completely different laptop and separate setup completely but experiencing the exact same issues.

We just loaded Flowarm on Monday of this week. I noticed there was an update which we both tried to do but the computers ran into errors and wouldn’t let us complete the updates. I just looked now though and I’m not seeing that update notice on flowarm. I’m sure that’s going to be what I’m told to do to fix my issue… easy out right…

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Khris

Can you confirm if you have a 6V, 3A power supply, or a 6V, 5A power supply?
If you remove the shoulder servo (805BB) from the SSC-32U, do the rest of the servos work?

6V, 3A power supply it looks like.

And yes, when I unplugged that servo everything else is working appropriately now.

I’m guessing I’ve got the wrong power supply with these kits? How do I go about swapping out for the 6V, 5A? WOuld LOVE to get this taken care of ASAP as I’m expecting to be moving forward on exercises with these on Tuesday of next week.

BTW, Thanks for the super fast reply!!!

Khris

It’s unfortunately a known issue with a run of the 6V 3A - many work, some don’t. We will happily replace the power supply with a 6V 5A.
Please contact us at [email protected] with your order or invoice number and we’ll send out a replacement ASAP.
Sorry for any inconvenience.

Email sent! Thank you very much!